Author: Marc Gilutin

Imagine sitting at a big round table at a sushi restaurant. Mmmmm, right?

The waitress brings a combo plate of sorts and puts it in front of you. You take one piece of your choice (some tempura? Sashimi?) And pass the plate to your left. At the same time, your right hand neighbor, who has done the same thing, passes a different plate to you. (Would you like some salmon? Yellowtail?) You take something and pass what’s left to your left.

Everybody continues doing this until all the plates are empty. Then you get to enjoy all this fine fresh fish! Yum!

Well, I’ve done that at a very large table with a LOT of friends. And, Boy was it fun!

Now let’s make this into a game, ok?

A game that’s fresh like sushi needs to be.

In Sushi Go (designed by Phil Walker-Harding, with art by Nan Rangsima and Tobias Schweiger) you score points when everybody’s got all the cards they’re going to get for that round. Cards? You get 108 of them! Rinse, repeat three times. The whole experience takes maybe 20 fun minutes.

In this fun game, instead of eating the sushi, you’re trying to collect various sets of cards which will give you points when its time to score.

Complete with chopsticks. And wasabi. And dessert too!

Very tasty! In a Major Fun kind of way.

Imagine!

Every round, you’re dealt a certain number of cards, depending on the number of players. Keep one. Pass the rest. Then turn your chosen card over so everyone can get a hint of what you’re trying to collect, or not.

Each different kind of fish (or wasabi, or chopsticks, or dessert) scores points for you when the round’s over, so there’s some definite strategery. On the other hand, so to speak, you don’t have to worry about anybody taking the game too seriously, because winning and losing are mostly due to sheer luck.

So pass me the Major Fun please!

Sushi Go, brought to us by Gamewright, is a game for 2-5 lovers of fine, fresh fish fun, age 8 or higher.

Or maybe I’ll just quote “Italian John” – a great old guy who used to work in the local pool room where I might have spent a little too much time growing up: “Super-Bella-Gorgeous!!”

The very highest of compliments one could get. Like a Major Fun Award.

I play lots of games with lots of different players. And I have yet to hear anybody say they didn’t like Splendor. Period. It’s very easy to learn and has a short enough playing time (30 minutes-ish) that there’s a great chance you’ll be playing back to back games.

The game is very easy to learn but offers enough strategy to keep everyone involved.

You start with nothing. Do things to make your nothing become something. Improve that something into a nicer, more efficient something and, hopefully, into a winning something.
Ain’t that something?

“The play’s the thing” – Shakespeare was a gamer!

When it’s your turn you either:

1. Take Chips: Blue, Red. Black, White, or Green
2. Buy a card from the board using said chips as currency
3. Speculate on a card from the board and take one Gold (wild) chip.

The cards are set out in three rows, each with its own supply deck. The first row is the easiest to get, etc. The cost for buying a card is always some combination of chips, for example, one particular low level green card costs 1 each of white, blue, red, and black.

But look how beautiful this game is!

So pleasing are the chips…..I frequently end up shuffling mine while we play.

“But how do I win?”

Some of the cards that are mostly in the second and third rows have a big number in the upper left of the card. Those are Victory Points – what you’re playing for. There are also a number of Nobleman tiles (3 points each), which a player can claim if they qualify at the end of their turn. The game goes on until, in a 4 player game, for instance, one player declares that they’ve accumulated 15 points. This means the current round is the last. Most points wins.

Splendor is published in France by Space Cowboys (their site is simply Splendorful) and is available in the US from Asmodee. It is designed by Marc André, with art by Pascal Quidalt. It can be played by 2-4 players, 1o-years-old and up.

Repeat after me: “Splendor is Super-Bella Gorgeous”, which translates to Major Fun!

Uwe Rosenberg has become one of the best designers of the ‘heavier’ games of the current generation. Four games in the top forty, as rated by us (you, if you’re registered on Board Game Geek) is downright Beatlesque, as far as world domination goes. But as good as these games are, none of them will be getting a Major Fun Award any time soon.

Not because they’re not terrific. Herr Rosenberg does great work. But they are quite a bit harder to explain and understand than the ones we like to call “Major Fun”.

And they usually take a couple of hours to play. Or more. This is fine with me on occasion. But not what we here at MajorFun celebrate. We’re all about FUN. Simple. Joyous. Major. Fun. Now Uwe’s “PATCHWORK“is just that.

It takes 10 minutes or less to learn and around 25 or 30 to play. That’s it. You’re finished. And thinking about playing it again. Right away. It stimulates the mind. And the sense of touch as well. All those patches, of different shapes. Fitting together (hopefully).

And it’s PURRTTY!!! OH SO PURRTTY!!!! Strategic too. A perfectly fun combination. A Gamer’s Game in the nicest sense of the word.

But I digress.

Patchwork is a two player game which, rumor has it, has a chance to possibly be played as solitaire, which is always nice. Each player has her own 9X9 board to play on in addition to the center “time track” you’re both moving along.

In this game, buttons represent both the currency of the game (they’re used to buy patches) and victory points at games’ end. You want to have a bunch in your pile. And it’s very helpful to have them on the tiles you’ve placed on your player’s board.
Most buttons wins.

When it’s your turn, you have two options:

Buy a patch from the circle of tiles in the center of the table and place it on your board. This costs you buttons (money) and time.

Pass and move your marker to one space beyond your opponent’s. You get one button for every space you move when you do this.

Decisions decisions.

Imagination and planning play a part in Patchwork. First, in visualizing what your personal board will ultimately look like and second, leaving as few empty spaces as possible. (There’s a penalty for empty spaces at games end that’s drastic enough to frequently be the difference between winning and losing. So plan, baby plan).

The game continues, with players taking more of these beautiful patches and adding them to their personal board until both have reached the (final) center space on the time track.

When the second player reaches that final space, the game is over and both count the buttons they’ve accumulated and subtract two points for each uncovered space on their personal boards.

We like Patchwork a lot, hereabouts. And look forward to more (Major) Fun stuff from Uwe Rosenberg.

As the Major knows, I’m frequently interested in the opportunity to mess with the rules (see Anti-Qwirkle)

I once asked game designer Dirk Henn about a house rule I’d come up with for his (classic!) game, Alhambra.

He said he liked the rule and went out of his way to tell me that any change to any game of his was fine as long as we were having fun. What more could a gamer ask for?

Love that guy!

RED7 is a game for 2-4 fun people of, as the publisher suggests, age 9 and higher. YMMV. I think a lot of 8 yr olds will do fine. It was designed by Carl Chudyk and Chris Cieslik, with art by Alanna Cervenak and is made available by Asmadi Games.

The essence of the game is to be the last one standing.

In the very short version of the game, the winner is decided after one hand. 5-10 minutes. “That’s it. You win. Whadya wanna play now?”

We usually play what (LINK) Asmadi (LINK) calls the “advanced rules”. But I promise you. None of the advanced rules are all that advanced. If you have the time, you should try them. ‘Cause more fun is better than less fun.

We usually choose the shorter version only if we’re using the game as a “summoner.”

Summoner? When two or more of us are here waiting for one or more of the others to arrive, we choose a game like Red7 to play and, as soon as more players arrive, we finish the hand we’re on and play something with the whole group.

(The thinking is that our starting a game without them magically “summons” them to show up already!)

Surprising how often this works.

Red7 is a game of cards, 1-7 of each of 7 colors. Suits if you will.

There are also personal cards to help each other to remember stuff.

Game play

Seven cards are dealt to each player. Then one additional face up card in front of each to start their “Palette”.

The “Canvas” (In many card games, called Discard) pile is then started with the special red card that says, “YOU ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING RED. HIGHEST CARD WINS”

Following that rule, the person to the left of the highest Palette card, goes first.

When it’s your turn, you have 4 choices

Play a card to your “Palette” (As in painting, a “palette” is a place where the artist mixes her colors. How clever!)

Play a card to the “Canvas” pile (Another artistic reference.)
The top card on this pile always indicates what the current rule is.

Do both 1 and 2. (The Palette card MUST be played first)

Do nothing. And lose!! We all know what that means and like it much less than the alternative. Included in this rule is if you begin a round with no cards in your hand. If you can’t play, you lose.

The rest is simple. SO simple.

If, after you’ve played your card or cards, you’re winning, using the top discard as the rule, you continue.

If it’s Not, you throw all your cards in and “kibbitz” (special gaming term).

So what are these rules he’s been talking about?

There are 7 colors of cards. Each color presents a different rule, when played to the discard pile.

Red: High card wins. The highest card in each players “palette” is compared to the other players’ highest card. In the case of a tie, it’s broken by color in this order, from highest to lowest:

Orange: Most of one number Wins. Current player looks for her strongest combo. If she has three of a kind, she looks around the table to see if anyone has more or a higher set of trips.

Yellow: Most of One Color Wins

Green Most “Even” Cards Wins

Blue: Most Different Colors Wins

Indigo: Most Cards in a Row Wins

Violet: Most Cards Below 4 Wins

Tie Breakers are very important in this game, since you’re always comparing your hand to the other players’.

“Tie Breaker” is a very popular term in board games.

For example, a game ends in which both you and I have met the requirements to win. But who wins? You? Me? Both of us??? (Some games actually suggest a shared victory, which is SO in the Major Fun Wheelhouse!!

But, most of the time, they’re looking for one winner and one or more tiebreakers are used to determine that luckiest of sons of guns.

Red7 actually has many tiebreakers built right into the game.

The first one is highest card. Then colors. Each player is given a card that shows the various card colors from the mighty RED (as in the title) to the lowly violet (Poor thing!)

So, if the “rule” is most of one color and you and I each have three of one color, we look for the highest card among the cards we’re comparing. High card wins. If we both have a 7, for instance, we use the color rule for breaking ties.

In Red7, a big part of the rules is “change the rules”. As you’ll see in a moment.

Every turn….or at least most of them…you may want to change a rule to better suit the cards in your hand. Or to even have a legal play to make.}

I know you’ve been wondering about the “Advanced Rules”.

As I said, they’re not at all difficult.

Look here:

On the turns where you play a card to the Canvas pile, if the number on that card is greater than the number OF cards in your Palette, you get to pick an extra card from the deck. An extra card means more options when it’s your turn.

Keeping score. In the advanced game, you’re playing more than one hand. when you win a hand, take all the cards in your Palette that helped you win (like a 4,5,6,7 when the rule was Indigo: Most cards in a row) and place them face down under your reference card. The face value of those cards represents your score for that hand.

When someone reaches 40 points in a 2-player game, or 35 in a 3, or 30 in a 4, the game’s over

Then everyone turns over their buried cards and totals them High total wins.

Then everyone (Participation! Yay!) has the *option to use the two white dice as two red, two yellow, two blue, or two green and cross off that total # in the appropriate space on the score sheet.

Once that’s happened, the “Active Player”(only)has a further option: She MAY add the pips of one white die and one colored die and cross off the number in the row matching the colored die.

Like a white 2 and a red 2 can cross off the red 4 on her score sheet.

But here’s the thing about crossing off. Once you make a check mark on a particular row, you can’t put any checks to the left of it. So planning can be challenging.

There’s one more thing. The “Active Player” MUST put an X somewhere on his sheet. If he can’t or doesn’t want to (because he’ll have too many empty spaces on the left side, he must fill one bad one on the bottom right of his scorepad. (Those are -5 points at the end)

What now?

The game continues with the players taking turns as the “Active Player” until the game ends.

One more special rule:

The last number in each row (12 for red and yellow. 2 for Blue and Green) cannot be crossed off unless you already had at least five or more Xs in that row.

If you do, you put an X in the 2 or 12 AND you also get an X in the “Lock” space to the right.

That color is now closed (unavailable for any future Xs ) for the rest of the game. If the game isn’t yet over, that die is removed for the rest of the game.

When two of the colors have been locked in that manner…or when one player has put 4 BAD Xs in the bottom right, the game is over.

Scores are added up using the formula at the bottom of the score sheet.

2. & 3. The average game takes 20 or so minutes, which makes #3 a certainty. Everybody wants more. Usually immediately.

(The first game of Qwixx we played, I devastated the opposition with 109 points!!

As fellow (Major) Funseekers, you’re no doubt familiar with Qwirkle. One of the first “Keepers”, if memory serves.

Well, after we’d played it most Tuesday nights for a year or two, my friend “Two Hour Bob” and I (2-H-B couldn’t sit still for much more than that) started messing with the rules……as gamers do.

First, to avoid the end game getting bogged down by trying to figure out what our opponent had left in his hand, we’d take four random tiles out of each game before we started without looking at them. Success!!

Lots of friends have picked up on this and. maybe, someday, it will be an official rule.

But then, one very silly night, I asked 2-H-B, ” Why not try ‘ANTI-Qwirkle’?”.

“Auntie Whom??”

(A reminder for those of you who need it on the basic rules.):

There are tiles of six colors and six shapes.

Three of each of each. (I love saying that!)

A turn consists of playing one or more of the six tiles from your hand in a straight line, intersecting with at least one tile already on the board. Sorta like that word game.

The rules allow you to play either Same Shape/Different Color or Same Color/Different Shape.

No exceptions.

EXCEPT… this one Tuesday night, we were feeling…exceptional.

And we changed the rules (Sorry, Susan!)

Instead of having one and only one thing in common with the other tiles played that turn, each one could have no shared attribute. No same color, no same shape as any of the others in its row or column.

So you could play a red square, a blue diamond, and a yellow star in the same row or column, etc, but none of their properties could match.

This was fun.

Major.

And scoring? Man, did we score!

Because of the nature of the new set of rules, ‘only’ getting a Qwirkle was a disappointing turn. Many turns ended up falling in the 15-20 point range. Or more.

So, even though you’d never ‘UNkeep’ a Keeper, there’s something fun to try with your copy of Qwirkle next time it hits the table.